When we first founded Comprehend in early 2010, I didn’t consider applying to Y Combinator , even though I was very familiar with YC, Founders at Work, and Paul Graham’s essays. I thought YC only invested in social/local/mobile companies and wouldn’t be interested in, or be helpful to, a startup that sold to life sciences companies, where metrics like ‘viral coefficient’ and ‘daily uniques’ are…
When you first start a company, nobody knows or cares about what you're doing. Everything is harder when you don’t have initial traction. Potential investors, customers and partners all want to see the the external validation of other investors, customers and partners, but how do you get started when you don’t have any of those? There are lots of tactics for addressing these areas, but one in…
My company, Comprehend Systems , was funded by YCombinator this past Winter 2011 funding cycle. The experience has been great, and I wanted to share some thoughts in case you were thinking of applying . First of all, a little about Comprehend Systems. We are creating enterprise reporting and visualization software which makes it possible for users to drill down in real time across multiple…